Man who murdered mother's caretaker kills self in prison

A 60-year-old man hanged himself in his cell in Ashkelon’s Shikma Prison on Tuesday, almost a year after he shot and killed his mother’s caretaker.

The Prisons Service said the man was found unconscious in his cell Monday night with a sheet hanging around his neck. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where hours later doctors pronounced him dead.

The man worked as a security guard in April 2013 when he took the pistol, which he was licensed to use for his job, and shot the caretaker in the head two times, at his mother’s Ashkelon home. He then called police and reported that he had murdered the woman.

The caretaker, a 45-year-old foreign worker from Moldova, was pronounced dead at the scene.

At the time of the shooting the man’s wife and daughter were in the house.

The indictment issued against the man in April 2013 did not include a motive for the murder or any previous record of a dispute between the man and his victim.

The murder was one of around 30 committed in Israel in the past decade by security guards using firearms provided by their job.

Over the past decade there have been an average of 13 suicides in Israeli prisons per year.